Indian craftsmen at Connecticut museum to build giant canoe

MASHANTUCKET -- A slow burn could create some buzz for the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, which reopened on May 15 after a five-month hiatus.

Out behind the museum's main building, on the "farmstead," Indian craftsmen are turning a massive, 36-foot tulip poplar log into a canoe, digging it out with fire and scraping tools. A team began the process at about noon Friday, tended the fire overnight and all day Saturday before temporarily extinguishing the flames.

Various recruits will resume the 28-hour routine each weekend until the job is done, probably in early June.

Mission Mishoon (an Indian word for "boat") is the biggest canoe burn in more than 200 years, according to Jonathan Perry, an Aquinnah Wampanoag tribal member who's heading the project. When the canoe is finished, museum officials plan to paddle it down the Mystic River before adding it to the museum's array of permanent exhibits.

"Ninety percent of the work is done with fire wood," Perry said, referring to piles of wood scraps and charcoal arranged along the log. "Native people worked effectively so that they had time to spend with their families. That's how they were able to build a complex society-- not because they were interested in material wealth, but in gaining an understanding of the world."

The museum's first weekend back in business also featured bow-and-arrow demonstrations and a presentation by Michael Hanke, principal designer of the museum's Pequot Life exhibits. Mashantucket officials had invited community leaders, scholars and tribal members to a dedication ceremony a week earlier.

Christopher Newell, a museum educator, said he's enthused about the reconstituted museum's future under Jason Mancini, appointed director during the hiatus.

"We've got to get rid of the stigma that we're the best kept secret in Connecticut," Newell said. "A project like this can really create a buzz."

Dispatched to a regional tourism conference in Maine last month, Newell talked up the museum to foreign operators.

"I asked people if they'd heard of us before and they'd say, 'No,' but they'd heard of Mystic Seaport," he said. "Hey, we're only 20 minutes away."

With closing time nearing Saturday, Mancini said he was happy with the way the weekend went. "Even on a Saturday, we had some school groups," he said. Among the weekend's patrons were visitors to the area from New York City, North Carolina, Poland, India and Brazil.

Reopening day's attendance was expected to amount to about 400 people.

Among them were Chris Newlan of East Haven, his wife, their two young daughters and some friends, all of whom took the elevator to the top of the museum's 185-foot observation tower.

"The canoe project's amazing," Chris Newlan said. "I was impressed by the care they're taking in recreating that technology. ... I'm surprised there aren't more people here."